Vera Rubin! I've been a fan...

Vera Rubin! I've been a fan of hers for years. I never knew the details of her struggle. In an interview, she once said that when she was starting out, everyone was studying Black Holes, the in phenomenon.

To avoid that rat race, she decided to concentrate on a "trivial" matter -- the rotational speed of stars within galaxies. A very tedious undertaking. She was the first astronomer to discover, let alone imagine, that these speeds were way off what one would expect. That was the beginning of dark matter, the next paradigm shift in physics. Sorry to hear she has passed away.

Then there's Fritz Zwicky ...